


Bake Off Write-along 2019

by Wikketkrikket



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Baking, Fluff and Humor, Great British Bake Off - Freeform, Great British Baking Show, Multi, OR IS IT??, Playalong, Writealong, a load of cake basically, baking contest, everyone is flirting and bonding, the biggest drama is cakes collapsing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 03:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20464001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikketkrikket/pseuds/Wikketkrikket
Summary: 13 bakers enter the tent to complete a series of baking challenges.Each week the characters will face the challenges from the 2019 show, and when their baker goes, so do they!





	1. Introduction - How it Works & Meet the Bakers

Hello! Welcome to my first ever _Bake Off _write-along!

To skip the explanation of the format and get to the story, please proceed to the next chapter :)

**Introduction**

To be honest, I'm worried about having the time to commit to this, but I'll do my best! To maximise my chances, I'll be adopting a basic format as set out below. But no man is an island! If anyone wants to borrow, adapt, or spin off from this idea and write their own I would be absolutely delighted. Please just mark it as a related work if you do it so I can see :)

**How it works**

To match with the 13 bakers on this year's show, I selected 13 MCU characters to compete. Each of them were randomly matched to a baker. They were **not **matched by age, personality, background, bench position, or any other criteria! Any similarities will be incidental. The characters will share their baker's fate in terms of being voted off; but to avoid revealing their identity and keep you all in suspense I won't be following the star baker.

**Therefore**! Please comment on each chapter your choice for Star Baker and it will be awarded in the following chapter :)

Each week I will try and write a chapter that will explain what each character produces for the signature and showstopper challenges from the show, along with the judge's verdict and any significant events along the way. These will be written in bullet point/note form, just to give me some chance of getting it done >.<

The results of the technical challenge will be listed in order, along with any events of significance.

There may occasionally be scripted dialogue, if that's the best way to show something. There may or may not be plot. There will definitely be bonding, flirting and general shenanigans.

Please note this is a non-powered AU; e.g. although Tony is still the famous CEO of Stark Industries, he isn't Iron Man. Yep, definitely no secret identities, special powers or supernatural occurrences here folks.

**The Bakers**

**Peter **is the youngest baker ever to appear in the tent. He learnt to cook with his aunt at his home in Queens, NYC, and when he's not busy with his high school studies he can usually be found whipping up a batch of his signature chocolate chip cookies.

Well-known businessman **Tony **has been astonishing the world for years with his innovative technology and robotics. In fact, he began baking as an experiment to see if his lab assistant Dum-E could be trained to create the perfect puff pastry. What began as research soon became a passion, and now Tony finds patisserie is the perfect way to unwind.

Following an amicable divorce and a short spell in prison, **Scott **discovered baking as a way to reconnect with his young daughter Cassie. He hopes that by being on Bake Off he can put the past behind him, and show the world what he is capable of.

**Steve** learnt to bake with his mother, who found it was more affordable and fulfilling to create their own food instead of store bought. Whenever he is home on leave from the army, Steve's rustic recipes are in high demand.

Friends since childhood, James, more commonly known as** 'Bucky'** applied alongside Steve, and is by his own admission surprised that they both got through. After losing his left arm and suffering a head injury during his active duty in the army, Bucky discovered cooking as a form of physical and emotional therapy to aid his recovery. He hopes that his baking can help other people move on after traumatic injury.

Second in our _Bake Off _duos are foster brothers **Thor Odinson **and **Loki Laufeyson**. They also learnt to bake alongside their mother, but developed very different styles. Specialising in bread, pastry and traditional Asgardian cooking, Thor's rough-and-ready desserts are all about classic flavours and high energy. Loki, on the other hand, is known for his intricate and elaborate decorations, tastes and textures; aiming to create a feast for all the senses.

**Dr Stephen Strange **is a qualified surgeon, specialising in complex and groundbreaking cases. He uses baking as a way to unwind, and often experiments with usual tastes and flavour combinations, such as his daily breakfast – a banana, tuna, tomato, coffee and bean curd smoothie.

**Nebula **says that she learnt to cook in an attempt to please her abusive and often controlling father. Now happily free of his influence, she bakes to reclaim the enjoyment of it, and to prove him wrong about her skill.

Father of three **Clint** often has to travel for work. When he is at home, he likes nothing better than to make his wife's favourite sweet treats with his two sons and elder daughter – the person, he says, who taught him how to cook anything more elaborate than a microwave pizza.

Russian-born **Natasha **took up baking after ending her career as a ballerina. Specialising in recipes from her home land, she enjoys finding new blends of spices to give her baking a real kick.

Research scientist **Bruce** often finds the stresses of everyday life overwhelming, and likes to bake in order to unwind. He believes precision in sourcing and measuring ingredients is the key to a good bake, and draws inspiration from his travels around the world, working in local communities as a doctor.

Community therapist **Sam **says he learnt to bake out of necessity. Working with veterans, he found a good way to get tough military men and women talking was to supply them with cakes and biscuits, especially chocolate. He now runs a baking-based support group, where the attendees swap and practice recipes together.

**Bench layout – top row at the back, bottom row at the front**

Peter - Nebula

Tony - Loki

Steve - Sam

Scott - Clint

Bucky - Stephen

Thor - Natasha

Bruce


	2. Cake Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Cake Week and the Bakers face a Signature Fruit Cake challenge, an angelic technical, and a dream birthday cake showstopper.

**Week One**

**Signature Bake** – A fruit cake

  * Peter is entirely awe struck by the tent. He has never used a stand mixer before, and can't get over how much easier it is to mix his traditional Christmas fruit cake, topped with marzipan, royal icing and a cute fondant sculpted scene of snowmen having a snowball fight.

    * **Judge's verdict**: The mix of fruit is good, the texture is almost right but slightly overmixed. The flavour is good but could have done with some alcohol (Peter explains that, not being old enough to drink it, he doesn't have the confidence to use it). The snowman scene is very well done and appealing, although a little childish for a 'grown up' type of cake

  * Tony presents a traditional Italian recipe, a _Panforte di Sienna_. This is a dense fruit and nut based confection using only a small amount of flour. The panforte is undecorated but for a dusting of icing sugar, to better show off it's beautiful glazed look and the texture of the fruit and nut pieces baked into it. Peter on the bench behind is regularly distracted by the delicious smells of the spice mixes whilst Tony is chopping and baking. Steve on the bench in front is similarly distracted, but he and Tony spent most of the round teasing each other about whether it is a cake or not.

    * **Judge's verdict: **A technically perfect and absolutely delicious panforte. Not really a cake.

  * Steve bakes his grandmother's wedding cake, based on a recipe in her diary. This vintage recipe uses sour cream, molasses and figs alongside raisins, citrus fruits, and a variety of spices. No pictures exist of the cake, but in keeping with the vintage theme Steve opts for an apricot glaze with royal icing, and a pattern copied from his grandmother's wedding lace. When he hears this, Tony wants to know if it is _really _from his grandmother's wedding dress or simply from Steve's dream dress. Steve responds, in a deadpan, 'You got me'.

    * **Judge's verdict**: The creativity is praised, as is the delicate and beautiful look of the cake. The citrus flavours are lost under everything else, and the judges feel the cake would benefit with fewer competing flavours. The texture is very heavy, an opposite to the extremely delicate decoration. One judge likes this parallel, the other does not.

  * Scott had never made a fruit cake before, because he doesn't like them and neither does his daughter. He therefore set out to make it as palatable as possible, creating a chocolate sponge of his own development filled with chocolate chips, raisins, candied almonds, and fruit-flavoured boiled sweets. The cake is iced and decorated to look like a giant 'unicorn cupcake', with a mane of buttercream icing and a horn made of rice crispies, marshmallow, and a few token raisins.

    * **Judge's verdict**: This cake would be adored by little girls and the horn in particular is admired. Texture is not good, as the cake is too crumbly to support the fruit. The ratio of fruit to chocolate chips doesn't quite meet the brief. The flavour is too sweet for the judges, though it may appeal to children – which is what Scott was going for.

  * Bucky is distracted throughout by Steve 'flirting' with Tony, and yells over Scott's head for him to stop it. He struggles with time management and has to put his cake in the fridge to cool it down. He cuts himself twice chopping up cherries. He is making a white chocolate, cherry, raspberry and strawberry bundt cake, with home made raspberry coulis dribbled over the top. The middle was meant to contain a white chocolate dipping sauce, but Bucky runs out of time and quickly fills it with the leftover berries instead.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Distraction was his downfall and the cake looks unfinished. However, the shape is perfect and it tastes delicious with flavours perfectly balanced, tartness and sweetness combined well. The cake could have done with slightly longer in the oven, but is overall pretty good. Bucky looks ready to pass out throughout the judging.

  * As fruit cake is not traditionally served on Asgard, this presented a new challenge for Thor. He cheerfully planned to make his own recipe called a 'fruit brick' – a heavy, bread-like sponge made with a small amount of brown sugar and drowned in syrup; containing dried apricots and cherries, orange peel and raisins. However, on seeing everybody else's elaborate recipes he decided to 'wing it' and chucked in a load of spice, decorating with a syrup glaze, icing sugar, and a nest of spun sugar.

    * **Judge's verdict: **The cake should not have worked, but it did. They can find no fault in it. The camera briefly catches Loki looking livid, before he smiles and congratulates his brother.

  * Bruce admits he finds it very off-putting being at the front, as he can't see what is going on with all the movement behind him and with nothing between him and the cameras. In his nerves, he mis-measures ingredients and adds them in the wrong order, meaning he has to start again midway through the challenge. Tony, Steve and Thor all have their cakes in the oven by then so step up to help out while they are waiting. At this point Bruce finally seems to relax and in the end presents a boiled honey fruit cake, decorated with broken chunks of homemade honey comb.

    * **Judge's verdict**: The flavours are there, but the cake is underbaked and the texture is all wrong. The honeycomb is excellent and the idea is original. Unfortunately, overall, it is disappointing.

  * Nebula also creates a traditional Christmas cake, with a blend of fruit, spices and rum. It is decorated with marzipan and royal icing, and features traditional decoration of Scandinavian pine trees, a Christmas cottage, and a deer.

    * **Judge's verdict: **The cake itself is technically perfect, with faultless flavour and texture. However, the decoration is very clinical and uncreative. It looks like it could have been bought in a supermarket. Nebula does not thank the judges, and throws her cake in the bin as she returns to her bench. Peter is horrified. Tony smiles at her and asks if she is okay. Nebula responds only with a glare.

  * Loki somehow creates a three-tier fruit cake using only slightly smaller tins than the others. His recipe is fairly traditional but uses his signature blend of spices and sugars. The cake is covered in a fruit glaze and iced, before being decorated with melted down boiled sweets, moulded to resemble an ice castle. The judges do not think he will have enough time to complete it. He does.

    * **Judge's verdict**\- Too many competing flavours. Otherwise flawless. The elaborate decoration is amazing, though one of the judges does not like the taste of the castle.

  * Sam makes a recipe from one of his veterans, a Polish Christmas fruit cake called _Keks świąteczny_. Although they are usually not decorated, Sam felt he had to pull out all the stops for _Bake Off _and so he uses a combination of clever cutting and stacking and a covering of fondant icing to create a ski slope shaped cake.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Fun decoration and a creative idea. However, the fondant flavour does not complement the cake, which in itself has decent flavours and textures.

  * Whilst Clint's wife Laura was pregnant with their youngest son, she developed extreme craving for currant cake, which means this is a recipe Clint is well practised at. His biggest struggle is the fact that at home he does everything by eye, so trying to make precise notes of amounts is difficult. At home he would serve them undecorated, but today he creates a sticky icing and a love heart pattern using glacé cherries.

    * **Judge's verdict: **The cake is a little dry, and the judges would have liked to have seen cherries in the mixture as well as on top. Overall however it is a good effort and not a bad start to Clint's _Bake Off_.

  * Stephen has developed his recipe by substituting each fruit in a traditional fruit cake with one from elsewhere in the world, which he has dried himself. It is decorated with a semolina-based marzipan and royal icing, with piped-on descriptions of the contents in colourful letters.

    * **Judge's verdict**: This is unlike any other fruit cake they have ever eaten, and they can't quite decide if they like it or not. The bake is good and the decoration is eye catching, if strange.

  * Natasha makes _Mazurka_, a dried fruit cake originating in Russia that contains walnuts, plums and raisins. She leaves it undecorated, because in her opinion it shouldn't be.

    * **Judge's verdict**: The cake is visually unappealing, but well baked and tasty. They have very few comments on it. Clint laughs and reminds Natasha that he told her to decorate it. Sam asks if they know each other. They both deny it. Natasha gives Clint a filthy look. Sam pretends to believe them, and asks Clint what his day job is again. Clint says he has to travel a lot.

**Technical Challenge – Angel Cake Slices**

  1. Nebula

  2. Loki

  3. Natasha

  4. Clint (Another favourite of his kid's)

  5. Peter (Was extremely excited by this technical as it is one of his favourites to make. However, his problems with the mixer in the signature prompted him to do it by hand, which meant he had to rush at the end and his feathering and decoration was not as good as it could have been)

  6. Steve

  7. Scott

  8. Bucky (Was marked down because his slices were very badly put together. He blames this on only having one arm. Everyone got really awkward except Steve, who snorted loudly, and Sam, who commented about poor workmen blaming their tools. Sam is Steve's new best friend.)

  9. Stephen

  10. Bruce (spent so long decorating his first slice and making it look perfect that he didn't have time to do the others, leaving some without any feathering)

  11. Sam (undercooked sponge)

  12. Tony (cake was extremely bright and luridly coloured, iced on all four sides, and for some reason decorated with silver ball bearings that he apparently brought with him)

  13. Thor (Had never heard of angel cake before. Basically served an overcooked brick. 'feathered' the cake by slicing and roughing up the top rather than icing it. Laughed heartily upon realising his error.)

**Showstopper – Dream Birthday Cake**

  * Natasha's cake is red velvet, topped with cream cheese frosting carefully ruffled into peaks to make it appear like a feathery ballet skirt. Above this is a gingerbread torso of a ballerina, intricately carved in position, iced and decorated to appear in Swan Lake. On the front she is the white swan, and on the back, the black. As a child she was desperate to become a ballet dancer, and achieved it.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Good design, though they would have liked the torso to be cake rather than biscuit. Not much innovation in the recipe, but a good bake and a strong example of red velvet.

  * Stephen's cake, ice cream flavoured sponge, is filled with strawberry jelly, and decorated with whipped cream and sprinkles. It appears to be moving on the plate. Stephen says this is due to the jelly. Everyone else is pretty sure jelly doesn't move like that.

    * **Judge's verdict: **On cutting, the cake made a noise that sounded like a growl and much of the jelly oozed out red. The judges hastily declared it very good and moved on. Stephen was overheard having strong words with his cake. Everyone politely looked away, except for Loki, who watched with an impassive expression and his hands behind his back.

  * Clint's cake is one he makes every year for his children's birthdays. Shaped and coloured like a piñata, when cut into it spills out home-made sweets and chocolates.

    * **Judge's verdict: **The decoration is fun, as is the way the sweets pour out. The sweets themselves are very good. The sponge is a little basic.

  * Sam's cake is tiers of lemon, chocolate and vanilla sponge, sculpted into the shape of a tyrannosaurus with honeycomb shards for teeth. When cut into, the belly of the dinosaur reveals a surprise – the bones of a smaller dinosaur inside.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Ingenious design, decent flavours. Slightly overmixed. Overall very good.

  * After his impressive bake in the signature challenge, everyone is eager to see what Loki will do for the Showstopper. He creates a scale model of a Viking ship, with 'Neapolitan' flavours; the ship's hull coated in chocolate and then decorated to resemble planks, the masts made of flakes, sails made from sugar paper and oars from spun sugar.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Decoration incredible. Flavours child friendly but not really coming through under the chocolate and buttercream. A little close-textured and dry, but Loki claims this was necessary to support the structure.

  * Nebula's cake features a salted caramel base, shaped like a bed. Attached to the bed are dozens of individual cake pop balloons, ingeniously held up by the way they are structured, and covered in mirror glaze to make them shine. The bed is lifting away from the floor at one end.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Another incredible showstopper, particularly in terms of structure. They would have liked to have seen more variety of flavours, but can understand that the time went into the decoration. Excellent mirror glaze.

  * At first Bruce's cake appears to be nothing more impressive than a pile of sponge, decorated to look like a pile of earth surrounded by ice. However, on adding a syringe of water the whole thing starts to smoke. It is supposed to erupt with ganache lava, but nothing happens. Bruce had set the cake in the fridge to set the icing, and now his lava has set too hard. As the chemical reaction continues, the bottle inside collapses, breaking through the crumbling cake.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Unable to taste due to the possibility that dry ice has gotten onto the cake. Applaud the ingeniousness of the design, but unfortunately it did not quite work out this time.

  * Thor's cake is a hammer. There does not appear to be anything remarkable about it, although it is decorated nicely with sprayed fondant, featuring intricate patterns on the front and rear.

    * **Judge's verdict**: The cake is meat flavoured. It tastes exactly like roast beef. Nobody knows how Thor achieved this or why, or what it has to do with the hammer shape. Thor explains that this is a cake he literally dreamt about as a child. Loki buries his face in his hands. The judges are forced to acquiesce that he met the brief perfectly; and that if they were actually eating beef this would be perfect.

  * Bucky's cake is in the shape of his left arm. Steve protests that this does not match the brief as Bucky had both arms when growing up. Bucky replies that if he had had a spare, he wouldn't be without now. The fingers and thumb are shaped in a thumb's up. Inside is vanilla sponge, with strawberry lace veins and cream bones.

    * **Judge's verdict**: Creative design, but the focus was all on the design. The cake itself is very basic, and relies on the veins and cream for flavour.

  * Scott's cake at first looks rather basic, a three-tiered chocolate sponge with pink buttercream and blue bands round the middle. On the top are edible candles with LED lights in. To everyone's surprise, Scott plugs his cake into the mains supply and the candles light up. The judges ask how the circuitry and wires are to be removed. He replies that they are all completely edible. The entire tent loses it. Peter and Tony rush up to look and have to be shooed away. Tony offers Scott a job on the spot.

    * **Judge's verdict**: Speechless. (Also, it is delicious)

  * Comprised of the most individual pieces and different mixtures, Steve's cake features the sun and nine planets, representing his childhood dream of going to space. Each planet is a different flavour.

    * **Judge's verdict: **The concept is good, but he tried to do too much in the time. Connecting the planets to the sun with bare dowels makes it look unfinished. Some of the icing lacks definition. The Jupiter and Uranus cakes are under baked. However, the sun cake is delicious. The judges particularly like the chilli-spiced cake for Mars.

  * Tony's cake is a convertible sports car, with a chocolate and cherry flavoured sponge and lots of details including a boiled-sweet windscreen, leather-effect fondant seats, and an orange mirror glaze so shiny that it looks freshly polished. The wheels are miniature Swiss rolls, and actually function so that the cake can roll along.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Good design, good flavours, good work.

  * Peter struggles during this challenge. He faces many hurdles – for one thing, his cake is the biggest of all the showstoppers in the tent. Due to its size relative to his apartment's kitchen, he has not yet had chance to practice the full assembly. He is also very nervous, as his cake – planned before he knew who the other contestants would be – is based upon Tony's lab assistant bot, Dum-E. The bot made front page news when Peter was young and inspired him to go into STEM. To be making it in full for the first time, and only a few feet away from Tony Stark himself, makes this very stressful for Peter. During assembly, when he can't get the clawed head to attach securely to the cake, Peter suffers an anxiety attack and leaves the tent for some air. Sam follows him out to help him through some grounding routines. Shortly after, Tony goes out and is seen in quiet conversation with him. The audio of the conversation is not broadcast. Peter returns and has to work quickly to make up for lost time, and so has to abandon his plans to have the cake be positionable. However, he still finishes with an impressive looking replica of the bot.

    * **Judge's verdict: **Peter's carrot cake is rich, moist and full of flavour, and his buttercream is perfect. However, it is the scale and structure of the cake that most impresses the judges, especially given the time restrictions. Tony is delighted, and takes selfies with it and Peter to show Dum-E later.

**The result**

As they were unable to taste his Showstopper, and he performed poorly in the other rounds, Bruce is first to leave the tent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to play along, please make your pick for our Star Baker in the comments.
> 
> P.S. Look up the electric cake created by Conjurer's Kitchen!


End file.
